


the cornice in the ground

by kirkaut



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Magical Realism, brief but graphic description of death and decay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-02-24
Packaged: 2018-05-23 00:38:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6099144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kirkaut/pseuds/kirkaut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry dies, and a stormcloud blankets England and doesn't leave for days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the cornice in the ground

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from Emily Dickinson's poem, "Because I could not stop for Death (479)"

Harry Hart dies on a sunny spring day in Kentucky, soaked in the blood of bigots and his own seeping sluggishly from the knife wound in his back. He dies with his hands clenched into fists by his sides, face turned down into a wretched scowl, and with the guilt of seventy brutal deaths weighing down his stomach like a rock.

He dies upright, standing on the hot asphalt, with a hole blown through the back of his skull and his brains splattering against the front doors of a church.

This is no holy ground.

Harry dies before his body falls, before his head finishes snapping backwards from the force of the gunshot. It's messy, but instant, the way most bullets to the brain are.

He feels nothing. He sees nothing. He hears nothing.

But if he were able to -

_the biting hot spit of a bullet and the terrible crack of a skull fracturing into dozens of pieces_

_the world shifting and tilting out of focus, blue sky up above and hot gritty pavement underneath_

_the gut wrenching sound of Eggsy's grief, a shout so guttural and fierce that the cosmos themselves quake and tremble in the face of one young man's agony_

\- but Harry knows none of this.

After all, he's dead before the blood on his hands has had a chance to dry in the southern heat.

 

ooo

 

Harry dies, and a stormcloud blankets England and doesn't leave for days.

 

ooo

 

Eggsy kills a man, then kills a few more, and saves the world.

A princess grins coquettishly through a small prison cell window and offers herself for the taking, some kind of consolation prize for killing a majority of the world's leaders and one megalomaniac, and Eggsy is tempted.

He's so tempted, wants to swoop in and kiss her and do anything he can to keep the adrenaline rush going because if he doesn't, if he allows himself to crash, then there will be nothing to distract him from the image of Harry being shot point blank.

"Sorry, love," he apologises, thumbing in the code that will unlock her cell. "I've got somewhere I need to be."

The door swings open and she tumbles across the threshold and into his arms, tipping her face upwards for a heated but chaste kiss. "Thank you," she breathes, and turns on her heel and runs, hair fluttering behind her.

Eggsy presses a hand to his mouth, wondering, and turns the opposite way.

The amount of bodies he has to step over means it takes a bit longer to get back to the private plane, Merlin waiting impatiently in the cockpit. Even longer for all the irate and bewildered celebrities and dignitaries wandering through the halls, angrily shouting at each other and into their cell phones and, occasionally, at Eggsy.

He collapses into the ugly tartan covered sofa when he manages to trudge his way up the small steps and into the cabin, and only manages a grumbled, "Home, Mycroft," before he closes his eyes and the world slips away.

He thinks of the people killed by Valentine, by Eggsy's own inability to stop the massacre before it had the chance to even start, and casts the net of his thoughts wide. He finds them all, hidden in the deep recesses of his mind and numbers surprisingly sparse, and goes to work.

The black, when it takes him, is a blessing.

 

ooo

 

Harry dies, and there's no sunshine.

 

ooo

 

The Statesmen retrieve Harry's body. It takes them nearly a week to do so, their numbers almost completely decimated by traitors in Valentine's pocket.

A week of Harry's body, all but forgotten and rotting on the steaming pavement, carrion birds picking at the flesh, until the gaping crater that concaves the back of his head is not the only hole in his body. It's a wretched, mutilated corpse that is eventually sealed into a state of the art container-cum-coffin, and flown directly to the Kingsman estate with muted apologies for the delay.

Eggsy stands on the tarmac, bruises from exhaustion stark beneath his eyes, and clasps his hands behind his back as the box is carefully extracted and wheeled past. It's glossy and black and completely opaque, shielding the ruin of Harry's body from his eyes.

He's grateful for it, in a distant way, because it gives him time to steel his nerves. He's seen enough television programmes to know that nobody, much less one left to Mother Nature's whim, is going to make for a pleasant sight a week after death.

Merlin's hand falls heavily to his shoulder and squeezes as the gurney rides past, and when Eggsy looks up at him him his face is solemn and his eyes rimmed red. There's an unhappy splotch high on his cheekbones and a tightness to his jaw that speaks of grinding teeth. Eggsy uncrosses his arms from his chest and reaches out a hand, fists it in the part of Merlin's jumper that shifts across his waist, and takes solace in the fibres. If he concentrates hard enough, he can feel every single one in the weave of the fabric.

Roxy tucks both of her arms around the other one of his and leans her head into his shoulder, secondhand grief weighing her down. Harry had been little more than a name to her, hardly anything beyond a spectre in a tale that an enthused Eggsy had to share. To her, he had been Galahad, her brother's superior, and Eggsy's sponsor for Kingsman. She only knew him in bits and pieces passed down to her by others, but enough to know that his loss is detrimental.

She'd wept with Eggsy when he'd finally allowed himself to grieve, if only because his pain was nearly viral, infecting all those around him with his misery.

Eggsy finds the sentiment sweet, but terribly misguided, all things considered.

He extracts himself from her grip when Merlin strides alongside the coffin, heading towards the morgue, and falls into step next to the older man. Merlin gives him a strange, sidelong glance, but says nothing until they are outside of the swinging doors, Harry's body on the other side, being prepped for a preliminary examination.

"You shouldn't be here, Eggsy," Merlin says, firm but gentle.

Eggsy blinks up at him and frowns. "Where the fuck else should I be?" he demands tiredly, and walks into the morgue.

He gets his first look at Harry for the first time since their row in the toilet, and drops to his knees. He retches, but nothing comes up, because days have past since the last time he's eaten. His arms tremble with the effort to keep him from collapsing fully to the blessedly cool floor.

The state of Harry's body, picked apart and exploded and rotten, flesh putrefying and bones exposed, is his penance for his selfishness. He could have done this the instant Harry was lost to him, could have done this a week ago, but the need to be by his side - to grasp those long fingered hands in his own - when all was said and done was so overwhelming that had hardly seemed to be an option.

Now, faced with the reality of his own self-absorption, he thinks that nothing will ever exonerate him of this crime. The Kingsmen themselves might as well lock him up and throw away the key for what he's done. He'd bloody deserve it.

But not until he's fixed the mess he's made.

"God," Merlin chokes from behind him, and Eggsy is spurred into motion. He pushes himself up, his stomach's constitution be damned, and shuffles slowly over to where the thing that used to be Harry is laid out upon a stainless steel slab.

He reaches out a hand, all five fingers outstretched and spread apart, and pauses. He looks back at Merlin and licks his lips; swallows around the lump in his throat.

"You might need to catch me, bruv," he advises, and then shoves his hand down across the body's chest.

The last thing he remembers before the black takes him is the blinding white light of energy that detonates between his hand and Harry's body.

 

ooo

 

In some parts of the world, people call them mutants.

Others, wizards and witches.

Eggsy doesn't know what to call the masses of people with abilities, just knows that his Gift has been a constant thrum in his veins since he inherited his power at seven years old, a surge and explosion of energy that appeared a scant few days before a strange man showed up at their door to tell them that Lee had been killed in action. His mum had sobbed and choked, but she had already known - had known the instant that Eggsy's eyes had flared bright and golden and he'd collapsed in the middle of their flat.

Dad was gone.

Having Harry in front of her, reiterating the fact, was just salt in a wound that had no hope of closing. He had no way of knowing, though, and so Eggsy had continued to sulkily play with a snow globe, wishing with each shake that the man would leave.

He had, soon enough, but not before handing over a talisman, all woven gold and empty condolences. Eggsy had felt its protective power the instant his little hands had closed around the medal, but he just turned it over in his hands until the door clicked shut.

He'd then scrambled up and thrown himself bodily at his mum, clutching at her and letting some of his power seep into her skin, warming her in the places where he felt that grief had made her cold.

"I'll be alright, babe," she'd whispered, hands stroking across his head. "Fifteen years ain't too long, sweetheart."

Fifteen years.

Lee was gone, but he wasn't Gone.

And for their kind, that made all the difference in the world.

 

ooo

 

A grenade, his mum explains later, is why his dad is gone. He'd thrown himself on top of it, and concentrated all of his power on containing the explosion to just his own person, absorbing the detonation and using all of his energy to keep his fellow soldiers safe.

It's the first time Eggsy really learns about the magnitude of holding life and death in your hands, and what it means to be a hero.

Lee contains the force, keeps his friends safe, at an expense to his own life that he wasn't hesitant to pay.

That's what it really means, Eggsy thinks with a fierce pride every time he looks at the little talisman, to be an Unwin.

 

ooo

 

Daisy is a blessing, a spot of bright light in a world where Eggsy frequently only finds the darkness, and she takes after their mum in all the ways that Eggsy doesn't.

 _Normal_ , his brain hisses when he holds her and detects no Gift lying dormant in her blood.

"Perfect," he whispers fiercely, and beams at his tired parents, and swears to do right by them both.

When he gets back to his flat from the hospital, he shucks his jacket and his trainers, and lifts the pendant out from his shirt collar. He examines it closely, all the spots where the paint has chipped and the gold has scuffed, and runs his thumbs along the numbers engraved into the back.

The man who gave him this must not know about Lee's return, Eggsy thinks distantly, even as he lifts his mobile and dials the numbers. All's the better, he thinks fiercely though the ringtone. He would move Heaven and Earth before he let his parents be separated like that again.

Literally, in fact.

A smooth voice picks up on the other end, and Eggsy takes a deep breath. "Oxfords, not Brogues," he tells her, and hears the quiet 'click' of surveillance equipment being turned on.

He's thanked for his patronage, and the dial tone rumbles in his ear.

 

ooo

 

That was the beginning.

There is still the small matter of the middle.

 

ooo

 

Every one of the Kingsmen recruits has a Gift, Eggsy realises swiftly. He's only so keen on the uptake because the amount of power that surrounds him the instant he steps into the barracks is nigh-on overwhelming.

Harry Hart's presence at his back is like a soothing balm, ebbing away the riptide of sensation.

Eggsy falls in line at Merlin's urging, body tense and shoulders taut when the ragged edges of untrained power poke at the careful constructs of his own. Some of it feels malicious, prodding without care, and Eggsy can only fling a sideways glance towards the haughty smirk of the culprit before his attention is dragged forward once more.

He's still uncomfortable and irritable when they fall out and make their way to their beds. Eggsy stares down at the body bag, rubs a thumb along the corner of the paper where they're to write their contact information, and frowns. He doesn't need this, he thinks, brain moving sluggishly, why would they think -

He takes the pen that Roxy offers, and gives up a smile in return. Their fingers brush as they exchange the writing instrument, and Eggsy gets a flash of images: soaring heights, gut wrenching fear, the thinning of an atmosphere and the hot metal scent of space.

If he draws back a little too quickly, she doesn't say a thing.

Amelia is the next to make his acquaintance, and when he shakes her hand after a moment's hesitation, he gets: the sensation of being surrounded by water, of diving deeper and deeper with no gasping need for air and no worries about the crushing pressure, of how swimming feels like flying, in an abstract way.

He doesn't take the hand that Charlie offers, not wanting to know anything more about the nasty little spark of power that flickers messily along his skin, so untamed it's almost visible.

Rufus gives off the sensation of a sprint, of legs churning faster than should be physically possible. Digby is the icy prickle of frostbite setting in.

Eggsy, at this point, feels like his Gift might be the ability to sleep anywhere he can get his head down, because he's completely fucked and about to drop where he stands.

He drifts off easily, and awakens just as quickly when he feels cold water lapping at his chest. The room is flooding, with water and with the agitated response of Gifts under duress, and Eggsy can hardly breathe in the open air, much less think coherently when Roxy and Charlie start shouting about the showers and snorkels.

He swims past Amelia on his way to the door, and doesn't pause to grab her and haul her to the relative safety of the toilet area, where their fellow recruits have successfully MacGyver'd a way to obtain oxygen. He's not concerned, because he knows about the little gills hidden behind her ears, the way her body filters the water as easily as if it were air, and how she's in no danger of drowning.

The door doesn't budge, but after a few solid punches, the glass of the mirror does.

He frowns and coughs and sniffles through Merlin's recriminations, hands planted on his hips, but doesn't dispute that he failed.

He can't argue that he didn't leave her behind, because he did.

And he can't risk exposing his Gift by pointing out that Amelia is amphibious, that she's still alive and breathing on the table despite Merlin's insistence that she's dead.

Eggsy does what no one has ever accused him of doing well: he keeps his mouth shut, and does as he's told when Merlin ushers them towards a different bunk room.

He says nothing, to no one, about how he would know if any of them died, because death is the one sensation to which Eggsy is no stranger.

 

ooo

 

Harry gets hurt.

Harry gets hurt, and they won't let Eggsy in to see him for weeks, which is infuriating and stupid but also terribly reassuring, because that means that they don't _know_.

He manages to eke his way into the room, JB by his side, but Merlin is there with Harry's medical chart in hand, so Eggsy settles for the reassurances he needs to take while standing ten feet away from Harry's bed.

That isn't to say that he doesn't sneak back in later, when he knows Merlin has sequestered himself in his office and there's a ten minute break between shift turnover, because he does.

He slips into Harry's room, careful to shut the door quietly behind him, and tiptoes to the bed. He leans over Harry's body and closes his eyes, concentrating, and - there.

He finds the subdural hematoma, finds the traces of a strange chemical lurking in Harry's bloodstream, and latches onto them with only a meagre amount of his power. His hands move forward, nearly of their own volition, until he has two fingers of one hand pressed into Harry's temple and the other planted firmly above his heart.

He gets to work.

Harry wakes up the next day.

Harry wakes up the next day, and ushers Eggsy into his room. Harry wakes up the next day and smiles at Eggsy and tells him he can already see that he's making excellent progress. Harry wakes up the next day and ruins every semblance of his mystique when he meets JB and spends a solid five minutes cooing over the dog, and another hour reminiscing about his own Mr. Pickle.

Harry wakes up the next day, and dies six months later.

 

ooo

 

Eventually, it comes out into the open that every member of Kingsman is in possession of a Gift. By this time, their numbers have dwindled down to just the six, and Eggsy has known about all of their abilities for a long time. Rufus is super speed and Digby can turn anything to ice with the barest brush of his fingers. Hugo, with his ability to phase through walls, is the most interesting behind Roxy, who can fucking fly. The magnificence of her Gift is slightly dampened by her crippling fear of heights, a fact to which she breathlessly confesses before they tumble out of the back of an airplane.

He even knows Charlie's gift, now, if only because he's seen first hand the way that he can turn his concentration inwards until a crackling force field surrounds his whole body. He has a strange aversion to electrical currents, though, since they tend to disrupt his shield, and it's a fact that perhaps not everyone has noticed. But Eggsy has, and he files the information away for possible use.

He finds Merlin and Harry's Gifts interesting and somewhat underappreciated; a technopath and wildly enhanced reflexes, respectively. Merlin's skill with computers is so innate that it's biological and an honest to fucking God sight to behold when he really gets going. Eggsy's not ashamed to admit he's lost hours of his free time "learning" from Merlin, which mostly involves sitting in a swivel chair and gawking, riveted, as Merlin manipulates technology like it's Play-Doh.

And Harry...Christ, _Harry_. He's been put in charge of their hand to hand combat lessons, and in the midst of their first class Eggsy had needed to take a bathroom break to splash cold water on his face and to will his erection away, because Harry was a thing of beauty once he went into what Eggsy couldn't help but think of as Battle Mode.

Long limbs, sweeping and striking out with ease, blocks put up and punches thrown with nary a second thought and no hesitation as to where or whether or not they would land. Harry would barely break a sweat, fighting against a gaggle of inexperienced but determined twenty-somethings, and merely fought back with a grace and agility that amazed and astonished.

He's drawn out of his reverie by Roxy poking a vicious finger into his ribs. "Oi!" he squeaks, leaning sharply away and drawing his arms inwards. "The fuck was that for?"

She rolls her eyes, but Charlie speaks before she has a chance.

"Come on then, Eggy," he drawls from where he's lying, supine and idiotic, across his bed. "We've all shared about our extra bits and bobs. Your turn." He levels a shark's smile across the room, and Eggsy's hackles rise.

"Ain't none of your fuckin' business, bruv," he bites out, glowering at the lot of them when they snicker back. Roxy is his only source of solidarity amongst the remaining recruits, though Hugo isn't half bad when he wants to be.

"God, I bet it's something plebe-y," Charlie chokes around his snickering. "Like, enhanced sense of smell."

"Explains why I can smell your bullshit from a mile away, don't it?" Eggsy snaps back, and relishes in the way that Charlie's face drops into a scowl.

It effectively ends the conversation. For that night, anyway.

Roxy draws him aside a few days later and asks, all honest curiosity and steely determination, but Eggsy still doesn't know her well enough to tell the truth, so he winks and says instead, "Ain't it obvious? It's me raw animal magnetism," and leers.

The hit to his solar plexus is well worth keeping some secrets hidden.

 

ooo

 

Harry is Harry, and Eggsy gets to know him in parts.

Harry is all suave lean lines encased in bespoke suits. Harry is the fond upwards tick of his mouth when Eggsy gets particularly cheeky with Merlin, the way his hand curves perfectly into the slope between Eggsy's neck and shoulder and gently squeezes.

Harry is a rotten sense of humour, filthy minded and a foul mouthed bastard, a pleased gleam in his eyes whenever he says something that sends Eggsy into hysterical fits of laughter.

Harry is the unspoken fissure of heat that simmers between them, is the feeling Eggsy gets when he tries to sneak a peek and finds Harry already gazing at him, unabashed.

Harry is Harry, and Eggsy gets to know him in parts, and falls in love with him as a whole.

 

ooo

 

The train test happens, and it is a piece of fucking shite. From the drugs to the power suppressing bonds that hold them to the tracks, to the way his throat is raw from screaming for his fucking life, and the unwarranted sting of betrayal that comes from feeling like Harry let him think his life was going to end...

Eggsy hates every fucking thing about the train test, and that's that.

 

ooo

 

Twenty four hours is enough to be allowed past the literal and metaphorical walls of Harry Hart's life. Enough time to share drinks and friendly jibes and passing touches that linger too long to be casual, until the vodka makes him brave and he crosses over to Harry's desk.

He plants his hands on the armrests and pushes Harry into a more accessible position before he climbs carefully into his lap, guided there by the large hands clasped about his waist.

"Eggsy," Harry rumbles, face tilting up even as he says, "we shouldn't."

"We should, bruv," Eggsy breathes, and threads a hand into Harry's thick, silvering hair. "We really fucking should," he says, and then slips their mouths together and inhales sharply through his nose at the feeling of light that bursts open, deep within his chest.

Harry's mouth is lax beneath his own despite his protests, fingers slipping between Eggsy's polo and his skin and gripping tightly, pulling him in as he inhales through his nose. He opens his mouth when Eggsy's tongue presses against his lips, and he tastes like a well crafted martini and his after dinner coffee, sharp and bitter and the best thing Eggsy's ever known.

Eggsy settles in Harry's lap, hips lowering down until he can drag the hardness in his jeans against the mirroring lump in Harry's trousers, grinding down and writhing.

The alcohol makes his head spin, but it's Harry that makes the world tilt when he runs his hands up Eggsy's back and ducks down to suck a long line of kisses down his neck.

The desk chair protests beneath their combined weight as they grind together, the trace amount of air between their bodies humid from their heavy breathing, and Eggsy skims his teeth over the edge of Harry's jaw.

"Been thinkin' about this for _ages_ ," he confesses breathlessly, and reaches down between them to undo the button fly of Harry's pants. "Want you so bad, Harry."

"Eggsy," Harry murmurs, hips canting up. "Wouldn't you rather we take this somewhere more...comfortable?"

And Eggsy is loathe to leave this place, doesn't want to move from the place where Harry first kissed him, but the thought of being tipped back against his undoubtedly posh sheets is too tempting to resist.

"Yeah, alright," he says, and bites down on the tendon that's standing out in Harry's neck. He gets an honest to God growl for his efforts, and the next thing he knows, Harry is pushing up onto his feet, Eggsy still twined around him like a vine, and they're stumbling their way to the bedroom in between furious kisses and a few stops to rut furiously against a wall.

For someone so consumed by the trappings of being a gentleman, Harry doesn't fuck like one. He bites and sucks his way across Eggsy's body, leaving lurid and possessive marks in his wake, and runs his mouth in a filthy narration of everything he's wanted to do to Eggsy for months.

Eggsy, it seems, does little more than sigh and groan and clutch desperately at Harry's back when he pushes inside, lost to the bright shock of pleasure and the innate sense of rightness that comes with every inward push. In between his breathy moans, he manages little sighs of Harry's name, and the occasional murmurs of, "Yeah, fuck, Harry, I'm yours, I'm yours," in response to Harry's snarls of " _mine_ ," which he accentuates with gorgeously brutal thrusts.

Eggsy comes with a choked off sigh, lips skittering across Harry's and the breath all but stolen from him, and Harry groans and steals his mouth once more as he drives into Eggsy's body ruthlessly, striving after his own orgasm. Eggsy tightens his thighs around Harry's waist when the rhythm of his thrusts stutters, when he feels the heat of Harry coming inside of him, when Harry collapses half on top of him and presses their mouths together in sluggish, sleepy kisses.

They drift off pressed together, Harry's fingers trailing lightly up and down Eggsy's side, his quiet whisper of, "My darling boy," following Eggsy down into slumber.

 

ooo

 

The next day, Eggsy refuses to shoot JB, and ruins everything.

He's fuming as he's exiled from the estate, infuriated when he steals the taxi, and heartbroken when it leads him back to the mews where Harry lives and the man himself proceeds to flay Eggsy alive with words. Any remaining traces of euphoria from the night before evaporate in the heat of their argument.

The thing is, Eggsy tries to explain. He really does. The words are tripping halfway off his tongue when Harry's glasses go off and the conversation is stalled.

Harry leaves with barely a sideways glance, and though their shoulders brush together when he leaves, the space between them may as well be cavernous and infinite.

Eggsy's left in an empty house, in a hell of his own making, and watches Harry die.

He screams, and the windows shatter.

 

ooo

 

The worst part is that Eggsy, if he wants to get all technical about it, didn't actually fail the dog test. He may not have pulled the trigger, might not have done exactly as they'd wished, but they don't _understand_.

A Kingsman doesn't risk an innocent, and they won't ever ask him to, but they'd wanted Eggsy to think that they would.

What kind of person would he be, taking an innocent life in the name of completing a mission, just because he knew he'd be able to fix it all? What kind of respect for life can he have if he doesn't respect a death just as highly? What would he become?

A monster, Eggsy shudders, thinking of the madness that lies beyond.

That's what he'd be.

So he spares JB, and destroys everything he's built the past few months.

Best to ruin himself rather than anyone else.

 

ooo

 

Harry dies.

Eggsy screams.

The world goes on.

ooo

 

Chester King tries to poison Eggsy.

Chester King _succeeds_ in poisoning Eggsy, point of fact, but Eggsy knows what he's getting into when he throws back the snifter of brandy and feels his Gift go to work, heating up his blood and eradicating the threat almost instantly.

"I'd rather be with Harry," he says, and feels the last of the neurotoxin leave his body in a small fissure of warmth. "Thanks."

Chester sneers at him expectantly, clicks the trigger on the pen when Eggsy flat out refuses to join him and his friends on their fucking insane scheme to raze the world's population. Eggsy shifts around in his chair, hands folded across his stomach, and cocks an eyebrow.

Minutes pass, and nothing happens.

Chester's victorious smirk sours, and Eggsy grins.

"The thing about us Unwins is," he says, and reaches out to fiddle with the delicate crystal glass. "We's awfully hard to kill. Might lose us a bit of time, but we're always coming back." He leans forward and bares his teeth. "Dad says to go fuck yourself, by the way."

"You little _prick_ ," Chester seethes, gnarled hands gripping tightly at the fountain pen. "How is this possible?"

Eggsy smirks, and lets the black take him. He sees the instant that Chester connects the dots, how he reels back at the way Eggsy's eyes go from being mossy green to being nothing but inky and opaque from corner to corner, flashing gold as he calls his power up into his hands. His body is thrumming, damn near vibrating, his Gift coiled and waiting to be unleashed.

"You," Chester hisses, and lunges forward, hands bound for Eggsy's neck.

He snaps his fingers, gold crackling between them as they click, and Chester's dead before his arse even leaves the seat.

 

ooo

 

In some parts of the world, people call them mutants.

Others, wizards and witches.

But everyone knows what to call Eggsy's kind:

The wielder of death.

 _Necromancer_.

 

ooo

 

The Statesmen bring Harry's corpse back from Kentucky.

Eggsy meets them on the tarmac, and follows them into the morgue.

He looks back at Merlin and licks his lips; swallows around the lump in his throat.

"You might need to catch me, bruv," he advises, and then shoves his hand down across the body's chest.

The last thing he remembers before the black takes him is the blinding white light of energy that detonates between his hand and Harry's body.

The results are almost instantaneous.

He fixes the brain, first. Calls upon his Gift until the delicate tissue reforms into the three pound mass of synapses and cells that make up Harry Hart, until every piece is perfectly in place and it's as if they were never splattered and split apart.

Next, bone regrows, appearing from thin air and knitting neatly back into the existing skeleton, until the orb of Harry's skull is whole and blindingly white, but protecting the delicate system of his brain from any further exposure.

The flesh is the easiest to mend, all gaping wounds filling in with any missing tendons and sinew, any lost muscle regained, and the epidermis easily replaced and stretched over Harry's body, unblemished.

It takes more than a little push of his Gift to kickstart everything into working order, but Eggsy feels it, knows exactly the instant that Harry flickers back to life, eyes shooting open with a gasp.

All in all, the entire process only takes about seven seconds.

Eggsy turns away from Harry's heaving, traumatised body, and gives Merlin a bleary look and a bloody grin, teeth stained red from the stream coming from his nose. He can feel a bit of it dripping from his ears, as well.

"Now'd be the time to catch me, bruv," he slurs, and then his eyes roll up into his head.

 

ooo

 

He damn near drains himself to save the innocent civilians caught in the wake of Valentine's aborted culling, pulling on his power to restore the lives lost to mind control and violence, and barely has the time to regain his energy before he pours it all straight back into Harry.

The general populace was easy enough, since he caught them recently enough after death that it only took a paltry amount of power to bring each person back to life. His own selfish desire to resurrect Harry in person, to feel the thrum of a heartbeat under his fingertips, and to see those brown eyes open once more, means that his Gift has to work a hundred times harder to reverse the damage done in a week of decay.

Eggsy is deeply, unrelentingly unconscious, and the Medical staff tell Harry and Merlin that it's only the powerful (but latent) thrum of his Gift that's keeping him alive.

Eggsy sees nothing, hears nothing.

But if he were able -

_Harry, slumped and bedraggled, head buried in his hands as he keeps vigil next to Eggsy's bed and_

_Merlin, pouring over Eggsy's medical charts, keeping a close eye on his vitals and_

_Michelle, retrieved by Kingsman to honor Eggsy's 'In Case of Emergency' contact information, bursting through the doors with a toddler clutched to her hip and Lee on her heels and_

_the bewildered, shell shocked looks exchanged between Harry and Merlin when they realise that Lee is still alive even though they saw him die, that all of their suspicions about Eggsy have been confirmed and_

_"A necromancer," Merlin breathes in awe, and drops heavily into the chair beside Harry's. "A bloody necromancer. You cheeky little bastard," and_

_Harry, gray and wan and exhausted, but keeping his hands tucked firmly around Eggsy's, lips pressed into his cool skin. "Come back, dear boy," he murmurs, and tears slip from the corners of his eyes. "I owe you so very much; an apology and my life, in fact," and_

_"I love you," he cries quietly into the unnatural stillness of Eggsy's chest. "I'm so sorry for all I said to you that morning, darling. I meant none of it. Please, Eggsy, I love you. Wake up."_

_Wake up,_ they all urge.

Eggsy hears nothing.

 

ooo

 

His Gift heals him, the way it does all things, albeit a bit slower.

The kind of energy expenditure that comes with bringing a corpse back to life requires a price, and Eggsy's body pays it dearly. Pays it without question, because the world without Harry Hart is a world that Eggsy has no interest in.

So he brings him back to life, and damn near loses his own in the process.

Not gone, and not Gone.

He heals.

Slowly, but surely.

 

ooo

 

He comes awake gently, eased out of his slumber by his Gift as it carefully urges him back to the land of the conscious. It's like swimming up from a greath depth, depressurising and striving towards a swath of light that seems ever out of reach.

He opens his eyes and takes a deep breath, and attempts to blink himself back into alertness.

"Oh, fuck me," he groans, voice ragged and throat dry. "Jesus, that hurt."

He goes to press his hand against his aching head, and that's when he becomes aware of the pressure keeping it pinned in place. He opens his eyes again and peers over to find the source of the weight.

It's Harry, whole and hale and so gorgeously alive that Eggsy could burst into tears.

"Eggsy," Harry breathes, and lifts the hand clasped in his own up to his lips, mouth pressing into the cup of his palm.

"Ain't you a sight for sore eyes," Eggsy rasps, running his thumb across the bags under Harry's eyes. "Christ, I'm glad that worked."

"Eggsy," Harry chokes, and presses his cheek into Eggsy's hand. His Gift sings in his veins at the contact. "My God, how could you do something like that?"

Eggsy levels Harry with a look that defies his exhaustion, for all its ferocity. "You fucking git," he chides, raw in every possible way. "How could I not? 'S you, Harry." He shrugs. "There weren't really a choice."

Harry's eyes squeeze shut as he holds Eggsy's hand more firmly to his cheek, stubble rasping at his skin. Harry looks like shit, the most unkempt and bedraggled Eggsy has ever seen him: hair mussed and wild and obviously not washed in a few days, his eyes rimmed red and deeply bruised beneath, and his facial hair long past the point of five o'clock shadow and verging on scruffy. He's still a bit grey around the gills, but Eggsy has never seen something as lovely as Harry in that moment, alive and breathing heavily into the spaces between Eggsy's fingers.

"How could you do something like that," Harry asks again, face turned down and voice muted with abject unhappiness, "after all those awful things I said to you?"

Eggsy can only find the energy to give a small and helpless shrug. "Cos I love you," he confesses, to the tune of his own heart beating and Harry's ragged breaths. "Fuck, Harry, I love you so much."

Harry shudders, mouths a desperate kiss against the roll of Eggsy's knuckles, and breaks apart.

 

ooo

 

Harry Hart dies on a sunny spring day in Kentucky, and Eggsy brings him back to life a week later in a display of power that is unrivalled, unmatched, in all the world.

Things aren't great, considering that a majority of the world's elite is dead, and there's the small matter of Eggsy's power now being out in the open, which leads to an endless line of questioning and more than a bit of poking and prodding by the medical staff at the Kingsman facility. He's still drained, still fighting internally to restore his Gift to its full capacity, and all he wants is some Nandos and a three week long kip in his own bed.

Any irritability is quickly soothed, however, when he looks off to his side and finds Harry standing there, an unyielding pillar of support.

He catches Eggsy looking, and reaches out to fold their fingers together. The power in his veins gives a happy little hum, seeping between their interlocked hands and soaking into Harry's skin like it wants to burrow under and stay forever.

Eggsy can understand the feeling.

Harry gives a small, pleased smile down at the tendrils of sparkling, golden power snaking their way up his arm. "I love you, too, Eggsy," he murmurs fondly, and Eggsy's Gift trills happily.

 

ooo

 

Outside, the clouds dissipate and the sun shines through.

It casts the world in gold.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> kudos and comments are greatly appreciated, and feed my hartwin trash soul
> 
> on tumblr as kirkaut :)


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